C is for centripetal
Centripetal force, as opposed to its counterpart, centrifugal force, as best I can recall is defined as the center-seeking force in a rotating system. I was never able to make any sense of this, as the...
View ArticleD is for deus
The idea and name of God are inseparable. It is no accident that every religion contains echoes of nearly every other religion. Resurrection is reincarnation. Akhenaten worshipped the sun alone. The...
View ArticleE is for exile
The idea of exile implicitly assumes that a condition of belonging exists. If one has never belonged, then one cannot be alienated. One can only be.
View ArticleF is for father
I will not write about my father, my physical, biological, material father. The affections and resentments I describe have nothing to do with the person whose name appears on my birth certificate. Ink...
View ArticleG is for glass
A kind in glass and a cousin, a spectacle and nothing strange a single hurt color and an arrangement in a system to pointing. We put the tree in the powder-closet, and draw a curtain when the candles...
View ArticleH is for hero
He liked his fiction like he liked his eggs—Hard boiled. He liked a hero. With Swiss cheese.Happiness is a nounwhich can only be foundin stories where no one is happy.Homer is my heroBoth of us are...
View ArticleI is for index
An index is my finger pointing. As knowledge and referability begin to exceed the limits of short-term (and long-term) memory, we need to create new ways to organize and access information. The index...
View ArticleJ is for Jonah
My name is Jonah, and I’d like to set the record straight. I was a paying traveler to Tarshish when we were becalmed. In their superstition, the sailors cast lots, and when that failed to draw a...
View ArticleK is for Kafka
It is difficult to think of Kafka as a model for emulation. Even Walter Benjamin, who adored him, said that “to do justice to the figure of Kafka in its purity and its peculiar beauty one must never...
View ArticleL is for logos
1. In the beginning was speech, through speech could man approach god, and speech was a god. The world, when created, was spoken and then named. We know this because it was written down.2. The word has...
View ArticleM is for midpoint
M is for midpoint, which in the modern English alphabet is not occupied by a single letter but rests between m and n. Unless, of course, w is counted as a true double letter (“vv,” as it was originally...
View ArticleO is for originality
Originality, like nature, is an illusion. Novelty—an unfamiliar or unrecognized combination—while often mistaken for originality, is simply a result of mathematical permutation in time, which allows...
View ArticleP is for Patriarchal Poetry
(This piece was originally published in Red Cedar Review)I got up in the middle of reading Patriarchal Poetry. In the middle of reading patriarchal poetry I got up to use my hands to fold clothes my...
View ArticleQ is for quandary
A quandary is the place where a river, flowing downstream, meets an obstacle and is divided into two parallel courses, never to be joined again. While the term is generally attributed to Archimedes,...
View ArticleR is for respiration
Respiration and spirit share a common root. This reflects a fundamental misunderstanding in history, language, and religion. The truth is not so much that spirit and breath are similar or somehow...
View ArticleS is for silence
Can an argument be made for silence as an aesthetic virtue? To be successful, such an argument would have to be sincere. Irony may disarm, but a contingent, ironic virtue would be troublesome. The...
View ArticleT is for Tom
I can tell you about Tom. Like most of the people I know, he is a writer. Like most of the people I know, he doesn’t write much. He wrote a story once about a girl he knew in high school. He gave this...
View ArticleU is for un
Un, in English, is a prefix of negation. Un, en français, is the indefinite masculine article. There is no direct English equivalent for un. A single indefinite article encompasses both the masculine...
View ArticleV is for Victoria
There can be no arc of development between the times I lived abroad. I was not a small Channeltown boy who moved to the city and came home only once. I was a visitor, a tourist, even as I ate handmade...
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